Sarah Causey with Implexus Lab

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

sarah, facilities, work, building, twin, consortium, design, industry, sense, digital, industrial, world, moving, operate, create, feel, technology, seat belt, Implexus, iteration

00:00

Scott. Welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go. All right. Welcome

00:21

to Industrial Talk again. Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcast in the universe that celebrates industry professionals all around the world. Yes, you are bold, you are brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you solve problems, and you are making the world a much better place. That's why we celebrate you on this doggone platform, and we are broadcasting. We are here in Reston, Virginia right now at the OMG Q1 meeting. And again, as I said it once, I've said it a million times, it is a collection of problem solvers. It's a collection of individuals that are really you don't even know that they're making your life better. You don't? I'm just telling you right now. I didn't know until I was being able to be a part of the OMG family. So that's what it's all about, all right, Sarah, cause he's in the hot seat in Implexus labs. Did I get that right? You did? There it is, and we're gonna be talking a little bit about digital twin, why they are a member of the consortium, and anything else that we could probably throw at her, I'm ready first meeting first

01:28

Yes, it is.

01:30

Do you feel smart?

01:31

You know, I like to be the dumbest fish in the pond. If the pond gets if I get too smart, I gotta switch to a bigger pond so I feel comfortable here.

01:45

Good way of producing That's exactly right. All right, for the listeners, just let's level set on who Sarah is. Give us a little background on who you are,

01:54

who so I'm Sarah Causey. I am originally from the south, but lived in Houston, Texas, lived and grew up in the Midwest, and now reside in Raleigh, North Carolina, which I think is the best of all of the world. You got the mountains in the beach, and it's great, great life. Mexican food. There's no Tex Mex. I do miss that's

02:17

every time when

02:20

somebody talks about Houston in that

02:23

area, it's like, I wouldn't be a very good, you know, Texas resident or birthright, if I said any difference,

02:32

it is definitely the place to go for that. So

02:36

I Well, what do you want to know about

02:38

you just outside of the fact that you were from Houston, now you live

02:43

in Raleigh, I do so. I come from the design industry, from the architecture and design industry, so technology, obviously, is changing in all industries. And so I was able to, fresh out of grad school, help transform some of the largest firms in New York City from CAD the 2d world to BIM, the 3d world, which was a fantastic opportunity, especially at a young age, to come in as an expert with these very, you know, important New York principles and help transition their firms to that world. And then for the past 10 years, I've been working as a design technology expert, not just BIM, but transitioning to VR and AR visualization and creating animations and moving into the gaming industry and the metaverse, it's been quite fascinating. I also have my drone pilots license if you want to get really so I know. So the evolution into digital twins Feels good, feels natural. So kind of leaving the design industry and trying to specialize in this realm is fascinating, because there's so many people from different industries contributing. What

03:53

do you say design What do you mean by that? Yeah, so design industry that seems very broad, it is. It is.

04:01

So I have been working with architectural in interior and landscape architecture and urban planning and master planning individuals for the past 10 years. So, yeah, so you know, when you design a space for humans, it's traditionally, you know, was on pen and paper and then moved into computer aided design tools, and once the really the infrastructure of the computing world came up to a certain level where it could handle it, everything's built in 3d so you kind of the byproduct of the design process is the beginning of a digital twin. So it's a it's a natural incorporation with the data, the live data, now, starting with IoT and moving into everything, these buildings are collecting all the time, and so it's, yeah, it seems like I got a good place here. See,

04:50

this is what's so interesting, because I, I can appreciate you joining your organization, joining the digital twin consortium, that that, to me, is a the right decision. And because just in that little bio of who Sarah is, there's a lot going on, there's a lot of things happening, and it's like me drinking from a fire hose. It's like, and I can only handle, sorry, it's a good thing. But that's a reflection of what, how the market in the world is changing, and it's such a rapid pace, and for me, without getting, you know, a confused mind makes no decision, and it's easy to get sort of overwhelmed and and why was it important for your organization to join the Digital Twin Consortium? Okay,

05:40

so in Implexus for short and Implexus lab for long, is a startup. So we, and by startup, I mean founded in 2023 we are a baby, baby, baby company. But you know, the handful of us involved have over 40 years of experience in visualization, gaming, virtual design and construction, so we bring these interesting experiences together, and the consortium offers us a place most of us are young, so a place to really, hopefully be a part of the future of what this industry is going to be. And we don't need to dominate it. We don't need to be the next Google. We just want to be a part of contributing, because it's something we all are passionate about and believe in.

06:23

Why are you passionate? Why is there such a strong belief, just because reality, I sometimes, if you're talking to me, let's say I'm a business owner, or I'm a facility owner. I've got this building, that building, and whatever I'm going to be somewhat, I'm going to have my spider senses going off in a sense, saying, Is this really necessary? Is this a is this going to create problems, or is this going to solve some problems? I

06:48

love that question. Okay, so to answer the first one of you know, why am I so passionate about it? So back when the pandemic first happened, we were all in lockdown. A lot of people believed that when we went home to work, we were saving energy. We may have been using energy at home, but we were consuming less energy downtown, in a lot of the facilities that people were working day to day. That is not true. In fact, what happened is, you can imagine, we actually doubled our energy consumption because all the buildings, well, I shouldn't say all, but for the most part, any of the facilities that were operating on a mechanical schedule, heating and cooling, which is very normal. I'm sure this building is operating on some sort of schedule, like your home might be right now. No, no one changed those schedules because they're not dependent on occupancy in the building. So they it's very likely that most facilities were still cooling to 68 degrees or 70 degrees for a gentleman in a wool suit, while we were all in fact, not there. So from a sustainability standpoint, I think we have the capacity to bring in through digital transformation and the very ever fast evolving incorporation of artificial intelligence to allow technology a place in facilities management to operate, frankly, more efficiently, more effectively, because you can start to create systems, schedules, whatever that are living and breathing. So if someone's in the building, okay, let's trigger a change in a temperature. If no one's here, let's keep the lights off. That currently isn't something that's mainstream in the way we operate facilities, because we just haven't gotten there yet. And it feels like a no brainer, and it feels like where we're going, and we finally have the computing capability to go there, which is exciting. Does that make sense? No, it does,

08:40

yeah, if it makes complete sense. And I didn't really think about that, because you're absolutely right. I think the the flawed logic was, hey, nobody's downtown. Surely must have turned out the lights. I mean, I would be the first, if I was owning that facility, I would be the first to say, really, nobody's down there. And I, why am I doing this? But then again, these are leases. And so it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense.

09:09

Well, I like to think of it like the invention of the seat belt. Ding. You know that thing, that annoying thing that happens when you get in your car, like, ding, ding, ding. And then we're like, okay, if I don't put my seat belt

09:19

on or you just stick it behind you. Just kidding, just kidding. They

09:23

sell, like temporary things. You can plug it if you're going to that much effort. Okay, well, we got a lot of questions going on there, but basically a digital twin for facilities. The seat belt, ding. It's, it's ideally pointing you, hey, let's do this. Let's do that. Some recommendations, and prescriptions for ways you can operate it more efficiently. So that's, that's the future that I see. I think others here at this conference see that as well.

09:50

How do you begin? How do you how do you take it? I mean, these are, these are amazing. Do. So let's just say these assets there's, I don't know where it's going, but there's a ton of assets out there. Yes, they're not smart. They're not smart in any way. They might be on timers or whatever. How do you begin to transition that? And you would have to have an ROI there. You have to be a financial reason why I want to be able to do that

10:20

absolutely so well. To answer the financial question, first, especially in the workplace, facilities, the buildings in all of these mid sized cities across the country, they're losing a lot of money right now, right? So they are definitely keen on saving money. And if this is a way to do it, I think there's a an ROI there that's quite clear. The wonderful thing about digital twins and how to answer your question about, How do we get started? There is so much information, like you said, out there already. There are occupancy sensors. There are, you know, the automatic lights turn on because someone walked by. There is security on almost any door in a major building of people coming in and out, you've got this information the heating and cooling, etc, etc. However, it's not being collected necessarily in one place. So facilities managers might have a dashboard for their heating and cooling system. They might have a dashboard for this thing, a dashboard for security, this and that. But a digital twin gets to be the wonderful holistic forum where everything comes together, and when you can bring it together, especially overlaid in three dimensions, a couple things happen. One, so we work in a gaming engine, right? We work in the Unreal Engine. And what that provides is a beautiful and easy to look at visual of the holistic living building. So if you're a building owner and you're like, I don't understand what all these metrics are, these bar charts on this dashboard, you can see quite clearly through heat maps and color displays, where the problems lie. So that makes the technology and the information accessible and easy to understand. So from an owner's perspective, awesome, great. Now I have access to make some decisions. And secondly, through the 3d realm and the incorporation of all this data together, you can start to create causal relationships that maybe you couldn't have drawn before. So conclusions about, well, no one ever books this conference room because it's hot all the time, because the automatic shades aren't lowering properly when the sun is beating in here, you have to bring the data together in order to draw that causal relationship. So I just feel like being in the center of the universe of data and facilities creates opportunities that didn't exist before. I don't know how you can't see an ROI in that from pure, yeah, energy saving. I

12:37

agree. I no doubt about it. I agree with you 100% and I think it's, it's always a heavy lift. If I it, I'm always going to look for somebody to help. Yeah, you know, I don't want to look through Google and try to figure out and get answers, because I somebody said on Google, I need to be a smart building of some sort. I need a digital twin. I don't even know what a digital twin looks like. It doesn't make sense, and, and, but the reality is, is that the technology, the capabilities, of course, are going to it's happening, whether you like it or not, right? And it makes complete sense. Business sense. I'm always going to go there. Business sense, to to create a an asset that is is efficient and optimized in some way, shape or form.

13:30

Now the wonderful thing about the consortium is that in setting standard, standards and processes and a common language, we can speak to across companies that makes it so much easier for whether it's a facility or an airplane or whatever you're designing to make a little bit more sense as we're all trying to suss out. Like you said, what is a digital twin? What do I need? Are you really selling me on something that's make believe? Creating that common language really helps the industry increase its trustworthiness. Yes, that's what it is. Yes, because,

14:06

because the reality is, is I'm getting bombarded with so many things. I just am owner of this building, but I'm getting bombarded and and I somebody does come to me and say, Scott, you need to collect that data? Yeah, I know that I need, I need to collect the data. Yes, I do. For what? For? Again, I hear you, yes, but it does. And once you establish that ability to be able to collect the right data, clean, ready to go, and then be able to represent that in a sort of a digital twin. It opens up so many other opportunities. I can run scenarios, right? I can I can test things, yes, then I could be so geeky about that too, as well, right?

14:53

So I had a realization this morning that you might find interesting. Dr Michael Greaves was talking at. Keynote this morning, and he's one of the dude

15:02

that found a digital twin,

15:04

right?

15:05

I've interviewed him.

15:07

He's an OG, right?

15:08

Kind of a big deal.

15:11

He was talking about time is one of the is the resource we can never really get back. You can't mess with time. It's just ticking. But I learned this morning that I can argue that I work in the world of time travel, because through the data collection over if it's cohesive, like you said, and it makes sense, it's collected properly over time, you can very easily hop back into the past, which is some of the work we're doing with argon National Laboratories right now with a nuclear test loop. How do we go back in time to points where things weren't operating properly and draw conclusions? But through simulation, I can go into the future, which is, you know, working with time and information in the virtual world is not something you can do in the physical world. So it's really cool, because maybe I can call myself a time traveler. Nobody's

16:02

going to debate that, but, but for me personally, I love the capabilities of running scenarios. What Ifs if I tweak this? What does it mean? Where's that, and then really trying to, and that's just, that's just me geeking out. I can, I love that, but the ability to be able to run scenarios, I think, has tremendous value. Yes, tremendous value.

16:27

So coming from the design industry, this is very familiar to me, because any design of any building is merely a prototype, and you've gone through likely hundreds, if not 1000s of iterations with computational design tools to get to that final prototype. You're never going to build physically the same building more than once you I mean, well, unless you're building like prefabricated units of some sort. So iteration in this way, in the building information modeling world, the boom world is, is our bread and butter. So moving into this Metaverse ecosystem where that iteration iteration moves forward with just more information so you get to better conclusions, feels very natural to us. So I'm excited about that.

17:14

It would make me feel warm and fuzzy. It would knowing I would have a level of trust and confidence knowing the solution is actually been vetted and thoroughly evaluated. And it's like, yes, it works against

17:30

specific KPIs for that client. Yes, yeah.

17:34

Love it all

17:35

right. For the listeners out there, how do we get a hold of you? If you say, Gosh, Sarah is speaking my language. What's the best way?

17:43

I would love that. So in Implexuslab.com is where you can find us. And it's Sarah Causey and has caused the implexuslab.com so feel free to reach out. Yes, I am so happy to make new friends

17:55

in Implexus that's I, M, P, L, E, X, U, S, I have to print

18:01

it starts with an i very close. Thank

18:04

you, sorry. Oh, now I gotta,

18:08

okay, so think of an M, and then think of Alexis.

18:13

I'm erasing. Thank you very much. That's right, that's the stink eye. I heard M, E, M, all right. Excellent job. Excellent job. Thanks, Scott. All right. Listeners, we're going to have all the contact information for Sarah and the company in Implexus with an eye out there, lats out there on Industrial Talk. So fear not reach out. You need individuals like Sarah to help you along on that journey, because it is a journey. Don't look at it as like a light switch. It's a journey and it's an exciting future. So keep that in mind. Sarah Causey, delivering the roof. All right, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned. We will be right back.

18:56

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network. You

19:00

Sarah

19:06

Cozzi, you heard her, I'm looking at her stat card, and just like her conversation, it's chock full of skills and abilities right there. LinkedIn stat card. Reach out to her. That is your call to action. Have a conversation. Let her be your Sherpa in the in the building world, and you're looking for efficiencies, yeah, have this conversation. Okay? You will not be disappointed at all. All right, if you have a podcast, if you have technology and you want to be able to amplify it. You want to be able to let the world know you need to put it out on Industrial Talk. That's what this platform is for. It's for industrial professionals such as yourself. We want to be able to educate, collaborate, and, of course, innovate. And boy, as you can tell by the conversation with Sarah, it is. Moving fast, super fast. Buckle in. It's a lot of fun, but you need to keep current. All right. Be bold, be brave. Dare greatly hang out with Sarah change to the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.